


When Love Won’t Let You Walk Away

by Poppedthep



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 04:15:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19191652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poppedthep/pseuds/Poppedthep
Summary: Getting that good dick from the fineness that is Brooke Lynn Hytes is not a bad thing. When he gets too sad he gives himself a talking to. Reminds himself why he keeps doing this when it’s not really what he wants.Just a drabble working through some thoughts. Vanjie-centric, with mentions of Brooke Lynn.





	When Love Won’t Let You Walk Away

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Keyshia Cole song Vanjie posted with a selfie vid of course!
> 
> .
> 
> I am really struggling with loss of work due to COVID 19. If you enjoyed this story, or any of my writing (or hate it but feel like doing something nice today!) please consider [sending me a digital cup of coffee](https://poppedthep.tumblr.com/)! 
> 
> If even half the people who see this did it, it would make a huge difference! 
> 
> If you can’t or don’t want to, that’s cool. People here are the best. You are totally welcome to continue enjoying my stories no matter what!

When he gets too sad he gives himself a talking to. Reminds himself he has plenty to be thankful for. Reminds himself why he keeps doing it when it’s not really what he wants.

Getting that good dick from the fineness that is Brooke Lynn Hytes is not a bad thing. Getting it on the regular. Plenty of guys would be more than happy with that.

Jose from two or three years ago would be tripping over himself at getting that big beautiful ballet dancer dick at all. At every second he got of Brock’s gorgeous poised sensual attention.

Sometimes he still feels like the little Drag Race fan boy that would wait in line for hours for Adore Delano meet and greets. He's still that same boy inside, just grown up, with a new object of his affection.

He still sees Brooke Lynn slinking around on stage sometimes and gets struck with awe, amazed he gets to fuck that. Pretty much whenever he feels like, still. To touch that body, ride that dick, squeeze that ass. To put his mouth on those abs, put his head on those muscled shoulders, though they cuddle less now. To kiss those lips, not soft and romantic anymore but still passionate and filthy. To have that tongue in his mouth.

It’s just once you’ve had more it’s hard to be satisfied with less.

Once you’ve had the full relationship experience. The nervous sweet I love yous, the slow gentle kisses full of feeling, the personalised necklace on your birthday watching you open it with his hopeful little smile. Wearing them together, your name around his neck, even though he’s not allowed to wear yours out yet where anyone could see, even though he never wears jewellery, it looks ridiculous on him, and you know he’s only doing it to humor you, because your last (considerably less white) boyfriend wore one. The formidable walls coming down with your tender efforts, revealing peeks of the hidden private parts you so badly want to memorize. The planning couples holidays, going to brunch together holding hands, going to dinner with each other's friends, finding everything you do impossibly adorable, cracking up in giggles at all your jokes, the shine of recognition in his smile and his tongue sticking out at even the beginnings of a joke in the twinkle of your eye. The strong muscular arms around you, your shoulders or waist or grabbing your hip, holding your hand, never near you without cuddling close. Standing near him in the club attention on the stage but grounded by a hand stroking your hip like you belong with him, the reassurance of his solid presence behind you. Two parts that fit together. Burying his head sleepily in the back of your neck and rubbing your ears in the morning like you’re his third kitty cat. Asking your opinion, your advice, trusting it, valuing it, making you feel important and smart when you know you’re really a dumbass. The Facetimes and video messages, not just half naked, pouty lips, toned abs and dick in hand but sometimes just to tell you he misses you, smile at you sleepily in an old hoodie, show you the cats doing something funny.

Once you’ve tasted all that, even the finest dick in America feels like a loss in comparison.

Especially when it comes with new teasing banter, playful shade, where there used to be adoration. A new arms length distance you can't figure out how to break through. A short smile that cuts off before his eyes really mean it, a mere flicker of his attention compared to what you used to hold, compliments that almost feel like he’s placating you. Insistence that he cares but how can he when you can’t see it, feel it, like you used to. How can he if he claims to know you and thinks it’s okay to laugh over dick pics and talk about texts and hookups and flirt with guys in front of you, grinning at you like you’re in on something together when you feel like you’ve never known him less.

Jose knows it would be best for his mental health to make a clean break. Stop sleeping together. It’s what A’Keria says. What his mama says. Silky is a horny motherfucker above all else and has her own self esteem issues clouding her judgement so she thinks he should milk it as long as the dick is good. But he feels it himself too, in the moments of clarity when he lets himself get real honest.

People don’t really change and when it’s not right no amount of love is gonna make it work.

He knows that intellectually. He learned that moving to a new state for a controlling boyfriend who didn’t want him to do drag and now it looks like he’s got to learn it all over again for someone else. He wonders if his life is gonna be a series of learning the same lesson in different ways.

He should cut it off. Shut it down. Like, yesterday. Stop letting someone waste his precious, valuable time.

Even if it means giving up regular access to the best dick he’s ever had.

There’s other good trade out there. There must be other good dick.

Maybe attached to a heart more compatible with his big romantic one. A heart he could really fall for. Fall with abandon, knowing he’d be caught.

He only learned about open relationships a year ago, talking to The Vixen. It blew his traditional little Puerto Rican mind. Now he sees them everywhere, especially among Ru Girls, and he gets it logically, he does. Almost wishes he could get into it. Life would be so much easier. It’d be practical, with the lifestyle they keep. But it’s just not him. He’s a romantic and he can’t compromise on that.

Even a regular monogamous relationship is barely enough for him. Feels flat and lacking. He wants the fairytale. Wants something extra than reality. Something grounded, practical, sensible, flippant Brock doesn’t even have the language to understand. Uncomfortable owning up to his own emotions let alone being responsible for another person’s rich oceans of feeling and fantasy.

Even knowing it can’t work out, he can’t help feeling ride or die about him.

Jose is too loyal. And he devotes himself to the wrong people. Just like his mama. As though if he cares enough, puts enough dedication into it, he can make up for the both of them.

He cares too much about what Brock thinks of him. It's why he let him talk him into shaving his head when they were dating and why he's still prioritizing showing up for Brock over meeting new trade even though he knows he's fine as hell and could get all kinds of trade himself.

He's reminded of it every time someone meets him with wide eyes and hunger in their tone saying, "Oh my gosh you're so handsome. You're even better looking than on TV. This is a gorgeous man!"

Every time he posts a boy selfie and the dms roll in. Most of them he doesn't even read. They're strangers. He can't fake interest. They don't mean anything to him.

Brock out of drag gets called Owen Wilson, gets shade for his beanies and plain old tees. But he owns Jose's heart.

Jose falls too hard and too fast, with his big romantic heart.

Brock was only four months. And a lot of that long distance after the initial few weeks, intense exposure every day but teasingly innocent in what they were allowed to do with each other. Then the real thing when the cameras were off, bursts of intensity when they saw each other separated by weeks of I miss you Facetimes and not frequent enough texts, too often initiated by him, and his imagination filling in all the rest with things he wanted to believe. A weird trickle out of it as they saw each other for work and couldn’t help flirting and had to relive the beginning of everything and play along and tease the fans with possibility, ending up teasing himself as well. As romances go, it was patchy at best. He was Brock’s first ever boyfriend and Brock, while coming from good intentions (he thinks, he hopes, he has to believe that he was) was very much on a learning curve, with much scope for improvement. (Is it bad that even if Brock wasn’t coming from somewhere pure and innocent, even if he had an agenda, or a game plan, he still misses it, still misses him?)

And yet it felt epic. Still does. He loves him. Love as deep and real as he’s had for boyfriends he dated for years.

The whole Drag Race experience felt magical, important, extra alive, and it’s hard to separate the life changing magic of that from their relationship that grew within it. He doesn’t particularly want to try, both things so tangled up in each other and so irrevocably a part of him.

Even their identity as #Branjie so entwined with the public's love for them both, half their social media tags pictures of each other, a constant reminder. He knows he'd be adored without Branjie, he experienced it last year, but maybe they're both a little more embraced and adored because of it, and either way it's too late now. It's forever a part of their story.

He knows Brock is all wrong for him, that they're incompatible and had to fight too hard to make it work, but now that he knows what it's like to be with a Brock, how can he be satisfied being with someone else? Even if it's easier, it won't be the same. Now he's molded himself into a shape that fits around Brock, that's all that feels like it can fill the gaps inside him.

He never admits out loud that he's hoping for anything from them continuing to hook up. He doesn't even know what it is he'd hope for. He can feel in his bones it won't be coming any time soon.

It's just that _maybe one day_ feels better, easier to handle, than _never again_.

It's just it's easier to focus on the shape of Brock's mouth around the word _love_ than get caught on the jagged edges of how _I still have a lot of love for him_ is on a different page, in a different chapter than _I'm in love with him._

How he has to wait til they're in public to hear it, getting little more than awkward distance out of him alone now. How he loves to flirt on social media because there Brock will say things he never says to his face.

It's just for every ten times Brock is flippant and annoyingly distant there's one time where he's the softest sweetest most gentle affectionate loving person Jose has ever known. 

It's just that maybe he believes in himself too much that he thinks he really can do anything if he puts his mind to it. Including making Brock fall back, properly, in love with him.

Maybe he should have more self esteem when setting his romantic goals, but he's always identified too strongly with hookers with a heart of gold.

 _Baby, I'm gonna treat you so nice you ain't never gonna wanna let me go,_ he repeats to himself like a mantra, feeling his Pretty Woman fantasy as he rolls his hips, Brock buried deep inside him, riding him sweet and slow like a gift, like it's his birthday.

(Even though he has more in the bank than Brock and Brooke Lynn is undeniably a ho, he's definitely the Julia Roberts.  _White boy please_.)

Spraying Brock's hoodie with cologne while he's in the bathroom so he'll go back to his room later smelling of him. And maybe he could have grown up with better romantic role models but those women in those films were there for him and his mama when no one else was. They were just like him. Feeling too much, acting crazy because of it. And the boy always loved them in the end in spite of it all, didn't he?

 _Baby, I'm gonna treat you so nice you ain't never gonna wanna let me go,_ as he takes Brock even deeper, makes the sounds he knows he likes. Tilts Brock's face, trying to get eye contact, because Brock keeps breaking it and closing his eyes.

Brock's big hands are tight on his corset trained waist, finger tattoos between his ribs, but his attention is somewhere unreachable. Can he not look Jose in the eye properly while they're fucking because he's over it or because he's not?

He should quiet his insistent little hopeful voice and move on.

It’s just that persistent little hopeful voice has lead him to everything good in his life. Dancing, MAC, pageants, the Mateos, drag, Drag Race, and becoming the most successful and beloved first out in Drag Race Herstory.

It’s led him blindly to brilliance in moments when emotions overwhelmed him and he had no clue what to do. To lip sync the fuck out of No More Drama and make Mama Ru whisper it was magic, to pull two legendary memorable exits out the air and make the world fall in love with him, to yell Spanish at a gorgeous Canadian in a hotel hallway and make it charming.

It’s also lead him to a lot of heartbreak and bad decisions, nearly ruining his life for people who didn’t deserve it.

But he trusts that little hopeful voice. It’s the truest, strongest part of him. It's his genius.

He's been the first person to do things no one else has done. Why can't he be the first person to make it work with an impossible ex?

Who says he can't?

But at the same time the effort of it makes him weary. It's exhausting to hope that hard. Makes him furious some days, sad others.

He doesn't like being sad. Never has. He knows if he was smart he'd just let go. But he also knows he's stupid.

He’s too heartfelt, feels too deep. But it’s how he is and there’s no point trying to change it. It’s his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

Besides he’s so busy right now. Stressed. Pressed. Working hard. Almost numb with it.

And when he’s not numb he’s, lonely, horny, tired and wanting comfort and ease.

He’s booked up for the foreseeable future so he’ll be this way for the rest of the year, at least. It’s not like he has the time or inclination or space in his brain or heart to open himself up to finding new potential Noahs right now.

Sometimes he just feels like getting laid. Like getting fucked well. By someone who knows his body and how to make him feel good. By someone he can get hard for instantly, just thinking about the lines of his body or the muscles in his thighs or the smug raise of his bushy eyebrows. By someone familiar and comfortable, still more comfortable than uncomfortable, even when it's painful.

And Brock’s so often there. On the bus, in the dressing room, in his Instagram tags and twitter mentions and fan edits, in _you still up?_ or _Want to do something next weekend?_ texts at one am. He’s still there. Haunting Jose’s heart.

Brooke Lynn is such a good flirt. With him and with everyone else. It makes him melt as much as it pisses him off, the twin impulses making him hot inside in different ways, and out of control in general.

He knows it’s not good for him in the long run but some days, some nights, he just wants to feel something. Feel the echo of something sweet again.


End file.
